The Sidewalks Kept Me Off the Streets

We’ve seen it before. We might even have one hanging in our closet or resting in our drawer. The omnipresent Tupac, the illustrious Biggie, peering down on us through well-circulated images of their countenances, plastered on dorm walls and printed on T-shirts. Any college student can recognize these ubiquitous images, state a couple sentences’ background on their infamy and move on to sing a few lyrics from “Big Poppa” or “Temptations”. But not every student comprehends these artists’ childhood situations, their cultural position, and the grave implications of the realities they symbolize.

Apparel companies are profiting from that cognitive dissonance. A simple search on Urban Outfitters demonstrates inner city culture’s universality, especially in fashion directed towards a privileged, upper-middle class demographic. A birthday card for $5.50 emblazons Biggie’s face with “Let’s Party and Bullshit” on it while Nylon’s e-commerce site hawks a simple white muscle tee with “The Streets Raised Me” for $32.00. It’s not the use of slogans that qualifies these products as appropriating culture – it’s the demographic they’re marketed towards, the price tag attached, and the status of the consumer purchasing them. In a world where expression is unlimited and capitalism encouraged, advantaged consumers are privileged to cherry pick positives from situations they will never have to endure, resulting in a dangerous flattening of culture in the pursuit of appearance.

Bullet Media asked thirteen figures in the fashion industry about the appropriation of inner city culture into mainstream, consumable channels. The result was a bevy of responses both favorable of this trend and disparaging. London-based streetwear stylist Matthew Josephs defends this experimentation, stating, “Whatever you do someone somewhere will find it offensive even if you’re celebrating that culture.” Yet other opinions problematize the idea of “celebration,” instead declaring that these fashionable acts of acquisition have darker implications. Writer and critic Juliana Huxtable notes that as generations continue to grow farther away from the historical realities of slavery, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement, more and more people feel entitled to “play with blackness; its notions of coolness, hardness, urban-ness and specific forms of hyper-sexuality.” Fashion editor Prince Franco laments the phenomenon of wanting to dress as if one is poor. Growing up in public housing, he used “ratchet” as slang for a gun. Today he states, “Ratchet is now a trend: everybody wants to wear cornrows and athletic-inspired fashion, everybody’s putting numbers on the back of their t-shirts.”

One New York artist, Mykeii Blanco, argued, “When something awkward or inappropriate happens, that’s GOOD, because it calls into question something dormant in our society that may need to be addressed.” But what defines dormancy? Following Blanco’s logic, if it is the privileged acquisition and marketing of inner city life that raises awareness, then that itself is a biased process of “call[ing] into question” societal flaws. Additionally, the appropriation by outsiders of inner-city culture simplifies and cheapens it, rather than reflecting the rich heritage that created that culture in the first place. On top of this, the products aren’t ornamented with accurate statistics outlining employment rates and America’s institutional racism. Instead they romanticize the least glamorous neighborhoods of all, offering confined grit to each buyer’s comfortable life.

It is not that these consumers necessarily have racist agendas or intentions. Their choice to display these aspects of inner city culture often boils down to simple aesthetic desires, while some argue their style is rooted in their appreciation for inner-city culture. Yet without a grounded understanding of the situation in which these trends are rooted, or any recognition or rejection of the socio-economic and racist issues that entrench these communities, inner city fashion is a selfish product. These privileged consumers are able to reap Tupac and Biggie’s cultural benefits without addressing the reason these artists were murdered. The elite’s ability to continue their existence in a world inherently structured for their success is in direct conflict with the costumes they acquire, and the roles they refuse to take. The contrast between product and pricetag embed a deep irony into the clothes – people pay top dollar to look like they aren’t able to.